Thu October 25, 2012

Morning Shots: The Books You Like Are Probably Bad, And World Series News

I feel very much like the radio lady at the beginning of Singin' In The Rain when I say "rumor has it," but rumor has it that Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone might be starring in something written and directed by Cameron Crowe, and that's actually good enough news if true to make me want to put aside those worries. (Dignity, always dignity.) [Deadline]

Also from Deadline, the series ABC just bought really, really sounds like Entourage by Zach Braff, and that's sort of a terrifying thought. [Deadline]

Tim Goodman is a Hollywood Reporter television critic, but he's also a die-hard San Francisco Giants fan, and you might enjoy his rather overheated and overjoyed discussion of last night's World Series Game 1. [The Hollywood Reporter]

If no one has sent you the video of Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei doing "Gangnam Style," you probably aren't on the internet to read this, either. But in any event, such a thing exists. [Slate]

Arthur Krystal is out to prove to you that genre fiction really is different from literary fiction, and along the way, he will discuss all sorts of cultural theories he has. I'm not sure it's really possible to believe the repeated insistence that he means absolutely nothing negative about genre fiction when he says things like his assertion that it "stick[s] to the trite-and-true," but boy, he's trying. Well, he's trying up until the part where he says "good commercial fiction is inferior to good literary fiction." [The New Yorker]

On quite a different note, Michelle Dean argues that commercial/genre/popular/whatever books have their own pleasures and their own challenges, and points out that none other than David Foster Wallace felt the same. [The Rumpus]

The rumors about Idris Elba possibly playing James Bond fly around periodically, but they're back yet again. And to me, they will always be welcome. Because I enjoy Daniel Craig, but: yes, please. [Huffington Post]